IWSG Wednesday: Indie ReCon Recap

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There were a lot of great posts from this year’s Indie ReCon. Surprisingly, much of the information was similar to last year’s online conference. There was some good information on writing and formatting, but what I primarily looked for this year was the most current and productive marketing strategies.

My biggest learning is that there is no one way to best market your book(s). Each indie author have his/her best practices, many of which conflict with the experiences of other authors. What was gold for one, worked poorly for another. And what works right now, may not work six months or a year from now. Trying and testing different techniques seems to be what’s needed, changing your approach and adapting. For one, I’m still trying to decide if it’s better to be exclusive with Amazon (to take advantage of the Lending Library and KDP giveaways) or have my ebooks up on the other major online retailers.

Here are my Top 10 posts from this year’s Indie ReCon (in order of time posted):

• Facing Your Fears by Susan Kaye Quinn 
• The Evolving Indie Industry & Standing Out in the Pile with JA Konrath and Barry Eisler 
• Words are Cheap by Rachel Aaron 
• Write, Publish, Repeat: How to Turn Your Art from a Hobby into a Real Business Live Podcast with Johnny Truant, Sean Platt & David Wright 
• Creating Book Buzz by KP Simmon 
• Maximizing Your Sales at Kobo by Mark Lefebvre 
• 5 (Interesting) Ways to Build Your readership by Joanna Penn 
• Understanding Amazon’s Recommendation Engine by David Gaughran 
• Taking Goodreads to the Next Level by Patrick Brown

I know I have to dive more into marketing, but splitting my time between that and writing right now is difficult. I’m doing well with my writing, so I’m focusing on that until I can get my third book finished. The one piece of advice that all the successful authors can agree on is to keep writing. You want to sell more books? Then release more books. There are a few authors that make a killing off of one or two books, but most of the successful authors have many offerings for their fans and curious readers to choose from. So with that said, it’s time to get back to work.